The new boss of the scandal-plagued Department of Veterans Affairs is rolling out his reforms. They include a slimmed-down chain of command and a wave of up to 1,000 firings.

This overdue jolt, coming amid Veterans Day memorials this week, is the needed answer to an epically bad year for the agency and its Washington overseers. Reports of phony appointment lists designed to disguise long waits for care led to the departure of the agency’s secretary, Eric Shinseki, a distinguished soldier but no administrator.

The mess occurred on President Obama’s watch, and the depiction of an indolent, unfeeling bureaucracy provoked a congressional uproar. Now it’s show time for the new leader, Robert McDonald, a corporate turnaround expert who last ran the Procter & Gamble consumer products giant.

At the top of the list is better service to be carried through by a top customer service official charged with listening to veterans groups and opening fuller access to agency services. It’s an enormous challenge for the 330,000-person agency with a $150 billion budget that handles everything from college benefits to amputee counseling at scores of locations.

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The Cabinet-level department will also embark on an overhaul designed to lessen red-tape barriers between programs and speed decision-making. Missing so far are specifics and a timetable for these generalized goals.

Drawing the most attention are the dismissals. McDonald took to heart the claims of inaccurate waiting times, devised by clinic administrators to meet performance numbers. The agency’s defenders say staff shortages prompted the phony numbers, a claim that McDonald plans to answer with a hiring push.

But he didn’t minimize the firings, which congressional critics have demanded. He intends to dismiss 35 officials, and the departures may eventual total 1,000 employees who “violated our values.” A judge will need to review the dismissals before they take effect.

It’s a combination of management uplift and hard-edged discipline. It’s also nothing short of a major shakeup for the agency at a crucial time. The new chief has a hiring goal of 28,000 medical professionals, including 2,500 mental health workers. He’s appeared in person at several recruiting sessions to spread the word.

More military members are surviving battlefield injuries than ever before, a tribute to better health care for wounded fighters. But recovery and further treatment are left to the veterans agency, which is clearly overwhelmed by the task. Some 9.1 million military veterans are enrolled with the agency, and the number is rising in the wake of the overseas fighting that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

It shouldn’t have taken a scandal to get the Veterans Affairs Department up to speed on this challenge. But the mission appears to be under way, at last.